Quantum Resistant Ledger

Peter Waterland’s project treated Shor’s algorithm as a migration problem before a cryptographically relevant machine existed. Instead of planning to replace elliptic-curve keys later, QRL put hash-based signatures at genesis.

Mainnet arrived on June 26, 2018 after ERC-20 holders were offered a one-for-one path into native Quanta. The production asset thereafter lived behind Q-prefixed addresses on an independent chain.

That history matters because today’s QRL is not an Ethereum contract and QRL 2.0 is not yet its production replacement. Three identities—old ERC-20, live 1.x and testnet 2.0—must stay separate.

An XMSS address commits to many WOTS+ leaves beneath a Merkle root. Each leaf signs once, so a default tree height of ten provides 1,024 outgoing indexes rather than infinite reuse.

Nodes reject a duplicated index, but a restored or concurrent wallet can lose track before broadcast. The documentation says reuse should be treated as compromise and funds moved.

RFC 8391 and NIST SP 800-208 validate the construction under controlled parameters and state management. They do not turn a careless backup or an unaudited wallet into a secure system.

QRL launched with PoW because the team judged the available post-quantum PoS designs immature. The chain later adopted CPU-oriented RandomX and still mines production blocks that way.

Project Zond, now QRL 2.0, changed the destination to PoS, ML-DSA-87, Hyperion and an EVM-friendly virtual machine. Testnet V2 went live in March 2026, but the Foundation still labels mainnet TBD and dependent on audits.

The original supply map starts with 52 million public and 13 million reserved Quanta, then assigns up to 40 million to block rewards toward 105 million. Foundation-controlled reserves and unmigrated balances are subtracted from reported circulation.

QIP-16 exposed monetary governance in practice. Token-weighted voting supported a 0.4 multiplier, and the completed proposal required a hard fork.

Yet official explanations now carry two clocks: the tokenomics page repeats exponential decay over roughly 200 years; QIP-16 specifies a flat post-fork reward and estimated roughly 28 years. The current explorer, not either slogan alone, is the operational record.

Anyone may draft a QIP. Its on-chain snapshot distributes voting weight by balances while excluding known exchanges and Foundation funds, but the workflow calls the result loosely coupled.

Consensus still arrives through code, release signing, operator adoption and the fork boundary. The Foundation advises priorities and funds work; token support alone cannot compel every node to run a particular build.

Die QRL Stiftung is a Swiss nonprofit in Zug and a disclosed holder of reserves. It maintains sites, wallets and development programs while describing itself as a decision-making body for priorities and distributions.

Its service terms draw a harder boundary: the Foundation does not hold keys, recover passwords, reverse transfers or insure loss. QRL ownership is not a share in the Foundation or a redemption claim on its reserves.

Migration to 2.0 will have to reconcile balances, new ML-DSA addresses, PoS rules and the status of 1.x. Until final procedures and audited production code exist, future staking income and seamless migration remain roadmap outcomes, not holder rights.